Yunchan Lim Plays Chopin With the New York Philharmonic

David Geffen Hall is very nearly sold out for the New York Philharmonic’s performances this Friday, Saturday and Sunday. So jump, if you can, at the vanishing chance to hear Yunchan Lim play Chopin’s Piano Concerto in F minor.

In the spirit of the season, let’s give thanks for this 20-year-old pianist from South Korea. On Wednesday at Geffen Hall, Lim played in the spotlight as if he’d been doing it for decades, with such imperturbable calm and eloquence that it was hard to believe that two and a half years ago he was essentially unknown.

It was June 2022 when he burst onto the international scene as the youngest ever winner of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition with a rendition of Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto that became a YouTube sensation. The two blockbuster Rachmaninoff concertos have been early calling cards for Lim, but this year has included a lot of Chopin, including an astonishing traversal of all 24 études at Carnegie Hall and on a new recording.

Chopin, with his restrained refinement, is an even more natural fit for Lim than Romantic warhorses like Rachmaninoff. Lim’s playing never feels seething or sweaty; he seems like he has all the time in the world, without ever giving a sense of showboating or indulgence.

In the first movement of the concerto on Wednesday, he was dreamily flexible in his phrasing without ever losing the music’s pulse. The slow central Larghetto was achingly poised, its 10 minutes framed by two perfect notes, both A flats: the first deep and softly buttery, the last a pinprick of starlight.

This movement is an opera aria without voices and, like a great bel canto singer, Lim understands that coloratura ornaments mustn’t distract from, but actually emphasize, the long, sustained central line of the music. In the finale, he exuded graciousness, attentive to details of touch, as in a passage whose texture moved swiftly from silvery to steely without ever losing smoothness.